Damage disc built? So you're looking to get the most out of atonement healing, right? If so then you want to go Mastery>Crit. Mastery wouldn't affect your damage but it would increase your atonement healing. Haste would burn through your mana pretty heavily and your ilvl (511?) sounds like your mana and spirit are on the low side anyway so you shouldn't min/max that yet.

Erh. If you're into heavy atonement, crit>mastery for the most part (there's a specific ratio that's mathematically best between the two). Your argument doesn't really hold any relevance - "mastery wouldn't affect your damage but it would increase your atonement healing". Crit would also increase your atonement, but it has the added effect of increasing your damage.

While I'm not 100% on the exact mathematical numbers, I am 100% sure that in a scenario where you want to maximize atonement healing, crit is far ahead of mastery.
You'll also notice that the reason he asks (if you bother to read the entire three lines he posted) is because he wants to be able to use the same set for both DPS and healing - not how he'd maximie his atonement healing.

Erh. If you're into heavy atonement, crit>mastery for the most part (there's a specific ratio that's mathematically best between the two). Your argument doesn't really hold any relevance - "mastery wouldn't affect your damage but it would increase your atonement healing". Crit would also increase your atonement, but it has the added effect of increasing your damage.

While I'm not 100% on the exact mathematical numbers, I am 100% sure that in a scenario where you want to maximize atonement healing, crit is far ahead of mastery.
You'll also notice that the reason he asks (if you bother to read the entire three lines he posted) is because he wants to be able to use the same set for both DPS and healing - not how he'd maximie his atonement healing.

Please link the ratio that mathematically shows crit >mastery for atonement spamming. I haven't been able to duplicate that scenario... also are you referring to 10's or 25's?

I understand wanting to use the same set for shadow/healing but I don't really understand why a priest would worry about his atonement damage instead of his atonement healing in a raiding scenario? We have dps-ers for that

Please link the ratio that mathematically shows crit >mastery for atonement spamming. I haven't been able to duplicate that scenario... also are you referring to 10's or 25's?

I understand wanting to use the same set for shadow/healing but I don't really understand why a priest would worry about his atonement damage instead of his atonement healing in a raiding scenario? We have dps-ers for that

The point is that mastery and crit have a symbiotic relationship - all your healing gets increased through mastery, however, critical heals "double dip" so to say - first you have the original heal getting increased by 1% per mastery point, and then you have the absorb of that original heals' crit getting increased by 2% - so say you have 10% mastery (10% healing 20% absorb increase) and hit for 10K, you'd get 11K hit along with a 11K*1.2=13.2K absorb.

And as said, while I don't know the exact ratio, I know that there's an "ideal" amount of mastery compared to crit, although that is purely theoretical. In a real raid enviroment, as absorbs go ahead of actual healing, crit will be "better" than mastery due to the fact that it'll cause less overhealing. This is going to be far more evident next patch even, as the Eternal flame nerf for paladins will cause disc to be the only spec that has "raidwide" absorbs they can stack up.

In any case, if you've got mathematical proof to back up the fact that mastery is the best way to go in terms of atonement healing, feel free to post it - I only play my disc priest as an alt when we don't have healers aviable, and I feel like I do so on a decent level. But always willing to learn.

Last but not least - DPS always matters. There's a reason that you prefer a disc priest to say, a holy paladin - both brings absorbs, both brings raid and tank cooldowns, but only one of them brings DPS that'll shave 2% hp off of a boss encounter (which on progress, is oftenly huge. We wouldn't have killed Dark Animus if I hadn't been pumping out 20M damage to the boss over the fight, for example).

Was just going to post and ask about stat weights. Decided to learn disc on my priest recently, and it seems every web site has a different take with some favoring haste, crit or mastery but no concrete rule. As of now, I've gone crit but still outheal my disc spec when I go holy in lfrs. Guess it's part of the learning curve...

You need a good amount of crit to get any Aegis proccs to begin with, that in turn is affected by other stats to such as Mastery. I am Holy geared, avoiding crit as much as possible, and when I go Disc it really shows. I hardly get any Aegis healing at all, wich is Discs cornerstone (the biggest one I would say). Bottomline; Mastery won't do much for you if you don't have crit (unless you use mostly PW:S). If you're looking for straight Crit vs Mastery ratio, it should be impossible to say, since it will vary depending on just how much you already have?

Mindbender is better than solace now imo...you have to cast 5 solace per minute to break even with mind bender, or one every 12 seconds. I don't really do this anymore since I usually have more potent healing spells to use. Mindbender damage is also pretty significant in 10 man.

Mindbender is better than solace now imo...you have to cast 5 solace per minute to break even with mind bender, or one every 12 seconds. I don't really do this anymore since I usually have more potent healing spells to use. Mindbender damage is also pretty significant in 10 man.

You'd also only need 5 FDCL procs over 3 minutes to "save" this amount of mana, assuming the instant flash heals are actually useful. seems better for holy

Holy fire is 1.8% of base mana (aka 300000*0.018=5400).

So let's say you did a solace every 12 seconds (15 for 3 minutes).
You'd get 5400+3000=8400 mana per cast, or 126K mana over 3 minutes.
There is also the normal Shadow Fiend, giving an additional 81K mana, for 207K mana.
I'd say that even with the slightly sub-par use of solace, it still pulls ahead. You have to remember that regardless of what "more potent" spells you might have, you need to cast penance+solace offensively on CD as disc, in order to keep up archangel (which you really, really, REALLY can't delay when you get your new 2 set due to the 10% crit) - if you say you don't have time to cast solace because it's not potent enough, it means you REALLY can't cast smite, as it is far weaker.

As for the damage VS solace argument, remember that Solace is less likely to cause you to waste any mana - it is a relatively small amount it refunds every time. A miss-timed mindbender (during a tide, trying to combine it with a hymn etc) has a FAR higher chance of wasted mana. You get a LARGE chunk of it at once.
Do also remember that while smite/holy fire/penance is 90% of dmg as healing, solace retained it's 100%, making it a slight HPS gain compared to mindbenders slight DPS gain.

I had swapped from Crit gemming to Mastery gemming for Heroic Iron Juggernaut. Turns out my ratings were very close to the ratios suggested in the link you gave.

It *feels* better to me, but that's purely anecdotal until I can do the fights we've cleared for the week a 2nd time.

My guild as of late has had some trouble with people being online (emergencies, internet issues, etc.,) so unfortunately we're not even in heroics yet. Even so given my difference in healing from the first week to the 2nd week after changing my gear (full crit first week, ratio'ed 2nd week.) the healing difference was definitely noticeable. That being said, heroics could be an entirely different story.

How do 10man disc priests do fights that are not favorable (malkorok/thok) because you can't atonement at all?

Prayer of healing spam seems ok for thok, but later on you'll just get chain interrupted. At 545 level you'd probably average 180k hps by blanket pw:s, the glyph drops it to 12 seconds so you can just divine star/mending during downtime. PW:S mana efficiency is about 1:18 if you can do 140k with 30% crit, better than any spammable spell outside PoH.

For malorok people are so spread out and due to movement poh won't hit all 5, so blanket shielding and penance/mending seems to be the way.

How do 10man disc priests do fights that are not favorable (malkorok/thok) because you can't atonement at all?

Prayer of healing spam seems ok for thok, but later on you'll just get chain interrupted. At 545 level you'd probably average 180k hps by blanket pw:s, the glyph drops it to 12 seconds so you can just divine star/mending during downtime. PW:S mana efficiency is about 1:18 if you can do 140k with 30% crit, better than any spammable spell outside PoH.

For malorok people are so spread out and due to movement poh won't hit all 5, so blanket shielding and penance/mending seems to be the way.

If you adjust raid groups properly, you should be able to hit all group members with PoH. We had one melee in each group and I used them as my "anchors".

So to break even with Mindbender, you'd have to cast at least (24+8.4*x=52.5) => 3,39 Holy Fires/Solaces per minute.

Just have a look at your last logs. Do you cast more? Then Solace gives more mana over the course of the fight.

A friend of mine who loves to atonement heal casts about 3.95 Solaces/Holy Fires per minute, that's 0.56 PW:Solace more than the break even point, or 8.4k mana*0.56=4704 mana per minute gained. That's 30.6k mana gained over the course of a whole 6:30 min fight, or roughly 1 cascade or 2 flash/greater heals. Hardly gamebreaking.
I smite less, so I prefer Mindbender. It's easier to press this once per minute instead of every 10 seconds to keep your mana up imho, and I don't really have mana problems when nothing happens and I can play smite bot. I do have when shit hits the fan and I have to use more inefficient heals, and in this case I don't have time to use Solace on CD for a tiny mana return.
But I think it's basically whatever. Solace heals a bit more, Mindbender does a bit more damage, but the mana gain difference seems hardly noticable over the course of a fight if you don't Holy Fire/Solace like a clockwork.

How do 10man disc priests do fights that are not favorable (malkorok/thok) because you can't atonement at all?

Prayer of healing spam seems ok for thok, but later on you'll just get chain interrupted. At 545 level you'd probably average 180k hps by blanket pw:s, the glyph drops it to 12 seconds so you can just divine star/mending during downtime. PW:S mana efficiency is about 1:18 if you can do 140k with 30% crit, better than any spammable spell outside PoH.

For malorok people are so spread out and due to movement poh won't hit all 5, so blanket shielding and penance/mending seems to be the way.

for thok you use inner focus at 4-5stacks so its back up at 22nd stack of roar

Wonder how all the people that keep saying you only need 8-9k spirit manage to 2 heal fights on normal, let alone heroics.

On malkorok I was mainly just spamming poh and about 1 minute after the stack phase I went oom at 12k spirit+meta+543 timeless mana trink, at 120k hps, didn't matter though since we had 3 healers who did 170k and the boss died after. Rather doubtful I could 2 heal it.

I mean yeah if you're 3 healing and just atonement spam 80% of the time then yeah, sure.

Wonder how all the people that keep saying you only need 8-9k spirit manage to 2 heal fights on normal, let alone heroics.

On malkorok I was mainly just spamming poh and about 1 minute after the stack phase I went oom at 12k spirit+meta+543 timeless mana trink, at 120k hps, didn't matter though since we had 3 healers who did 170k and the boss died after. Rather doubtful I could 2 heal it.

I mean yeah if you're 3 healing and just atonement spam 80% of the time then yeah, sure.

Using PW: Shield under lucidity from your meta spits mana get out (100% of the PW: Shield cost). Lining up Halo on Malkorok with a meta proc to build shields (bonus if with AA) will fill them quickly.

10-11k for 10m if you two heal should be more than enough, though I do see some drop down to 8-9k.

Malkorok is also pretty much Disc's enemy, much like Heroic Tortos. It's very difficult to build up the shields for us, though Halo does a fairly decent job (and I imagine Cascade as well).

In 25 I run with 8.2k and never even get close to OOM. I healed Galakras and Iron Juggernaught as a 10m disc with 7.4k spirit, but we three healed (Monk for towers, and then shammy and me for main add waves).

Am I to understand that both of you only cast HF/Solace with 0 Evangelism stacks? That doesn't sound right!
Holy fire costs anywhere between 5400 and 3780 (assuming inner fire). If you like smiting, solace is worth less mana. If you only gain evangelism though solace it would be worth more.